E3 by Me3: Electronic Arts

That’s E3 by Me, Me, Me because all I’m doing is writing how I feel about the show. I’m not giving each company a “report card” and I’m not declaring that anybody “won E3”

Genuine or not, I was surprised and impressed by EA’s commitment to the community. The way they spoke about including and responding to gamers, influencers and eSports competitors says a lot about the mid-2010’s marketing focus, if not corporate culture itself. Goodbye old media — the magazines and blogs of the world — publishers are getting better and better at reaching directly to their players. If I, an ultra cynic of press talk, can almost be won over then the general public must be totally on board.

Games-wise they didn’t have much of anything for me beyond Mass Effect Andromeda which I’m super excited for but what more is there to say at this point? Titanfall 2 single-player could be a cool 8 hour campaign. Battlefield 1 looked impressive but I’ll probably never jump in unless it winds up being free somehow. There’s a million Star Wars games coming, at least some of which looked intriguing and awesome but are so far off.

And then there’s EA Originals. I’d rather see the return of EA Sports BIG as a sub-label but pushing more indie games into EA’s global spotlight isn’t a bad thing. I’m just not that excited by Fe. The game’s been shown as far back as October 2015 and while it looks pretty they didn’t use the stage time to confirm platform, release or even details on other EA Originals. It feels a little like Fe and Unravel 2 could be the only games released under the program or that new titles will be very far apart.

In the end, can we please have Peter Moore back as CEO? Seeing him front the UK stage was awesome and I wish he’d had more of a presence on the stream. Also, what’s up with PopCap? After the recent delistings and their near singular focus on Garden Warfare I’m wondering how much of the studio remains.